Which Way Did the Bicycle Go?

This book contains the best problems selected from over 25 years of the Problem of the Week at Macalester College. This collection will give students, teachers, and university professors a chance to experience the pleasure of wrestling with some beautiful problems of elementary mathematics. Readers can compare their sleuthing talents with those of Sherlock Holmes, who made a bad mistake regarding the first problem in the collection: Determine the direction of travel of a bicycle that has left its tracks in a patch of mud. The collection contains a variety of other unusual and interesting problems in geometry, algebra, combinatorics, and number theory. For example, if a pizza is sliced into eight 45-degree wedges meeting at a point other than the center of the pizza, and two people eat alternating wedges, will they get equal amounts of pizza? Or: Is an advertiser's claim that a certain unusual combination lock allows thousands of combinations justified? Complete solutions to the 191 problems are included with problem variations and topics for investigation.

• Full solutions are included
• Problems selected to be appealing and challenging, but not intimidating
• Particularly useful for teachers looking for ways to stimulate interest in mathematics